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Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies

an open letter to WTOP News

by Brian Ballard Quass, the Drug War Philosopher

August 24, 2023



The author submitted the following suggestions to WTOP News today in the hopes of convincing the news outlet to stop promoting the hateful Drug War narrative.


1) regarding coverage of DC killings. In 2014, Ann Heather Thompson wrote the following in the Atlantic: "Without the War on Drugs, the level of gun violence 1 that plagues so many poor inner-city neighborhoods today simply would not exist." Yet most media outlets in the country write as if the rising inner-city gun violence 2 is inexplicable. I request that WTOP start connecting the dots between prohibition and gun violence 3 , for it was prohibition that incentivized the disastrous arming of the hood in the first place, leading to the creation of no-go shooting zones that, to America's shame, have remained in force for almost half a century now.

April 2025 Update

2) Regarding your coverage of drugs like Fentanyl and MDMA 4 and laughing gas : Please remember ALL the stakeholders in the drug debate. When we demonize drugs rather than understand them, we throw pain patients and the depressed under the bus, by forcing them to go without godsends -- or without adequate doses of godsends -- because doctors are afraid to prescribe. There's a call now for the outlawing of laughing gas . That's throwing millions of the depressed under the bus. I hope that WTOP will remind its readers, by way of context, that the philosophy of William James was inspired by his use of laughing gas 5 and that he himself said that we must study altered states in order to understand ultimate reality. "No account of the universe in its totality," wrote James, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded." But disregard them we must if prohibitionists have their way.

3) Please be sceptical of anything that the DEA reports. They have a vested interest in seeing that there is always a drug problem. Their multi-billion-dollar budget depends upon it. I suggest that you have your reporters read "Synthetic Panics" before they report government drug information as gospel truth. It tells how the DEA leverages local drug misuse into a series of national crises with the help of agitprop documentaries on shows like 48 Hours. "The New Face of Fentanyl 6 , the New Face of Ice, the New Face of Crack, The New Face of PCP 7," etc. NIDA 8 is not a good source either, for they fund studies only on abuse and misuse - never on positive use, meaning they are truly a propaganda arm of the US government.

If these suggestions seem controversial, please consider that Donald Trump won the 2016 election because of the Drug War, whose draconian laws sent millions of minorities to jail, thereby depriving them of the right and/or the ability to vote. In fact, that's clearly the REAL reason for the War on Drugs: like GOP redistricting, it's a way to let the far right steal elections. 37,000 people are killed by cars every year, but we do not need to outlaw cars: we need to teach safe driving. Just so with the modern scapegoat called drugs. We have created all the problems by ensuring dangerous uncertain drug supplies for users, meanwhile absolutely refusing to teach them safe use - for the insane reason that this might encourage use. Use is not bad in itself. To say so is Christian Science.

In short, please stop reckoning without the Drug War. It has huge negative ramifications on a free society. Please start pushing back with smart coverage that connects the dots between today's problems and our disastrous drug policy. The kinds of drugs we demonize today have inspired entire religions. As Trump's propaganda-aided election has shown, America can have democracy or it can have a Drug War, but it cannot have both.



Author's Follow-up:

April 08, 2025

picture of clock metaphorically suggesting a follow-up




Imagine a world in which the media covered other risky activities the way that they cover drug use.

We would see the following newscasts:

Killer Horses


NEWSCASTER 1: Yet another Boulder County teenager has been killed by a horse. 15-year-old Constance Noring was riding alone on Shadow Canyon Trail last night when her palomino horse slipped and fell, precipitating both animal and rider down into a 300-foot ravine.

NEWSCASTER 2: How terrible, Bill!

NEWSCASTER 1: Apparently, Constance had been boasting to her friends just recently that she could, ahem, quote-unquote, "handle a horse."

NEWSCASTER 2: She failed to realize, Bill, that NOBODY can handle a horse.

NEWSCASTER 1: You got that right, Sue.

NEWSCASTER 2: Christopher Reeves thought HE could handle a horse.

NEWSCASTER 1: What we're saying is, kids: just say no to horses. Fair enough?

Plane Silly


NEWSCASTER 1: The slaughter continues. Yet another deadly plane crash in the U.S., this time in Michigan.

NEWSCASTER 2: That's right, Bill. Planes have killed a total of 352 passengers in the United States alone since the year 2000.

NEWSCASTER 1: That's right, Sue. It makes you wonder: when will the madness end?

NEWSCASTER 2: Not until Congress wakes up and outlaws those death traps that we call airplanes, Bill.

NEWSCASTER 1: Right enough, Sue. Right enough.

Shark Bait


NEWSCASTER 1: Sharks continue to kill with impunity along the beaches of Central Florida. Another young white shark victim has been reported in Volusia County.

NEWSCASTER 2: In today's op-ed piece, Channel 9 General Manager Ella Vader makes the case for an aggressive extermination campaign against the killer fish. Stay tuned.

NEWSCASTER 1: Before anybody starts calling the ASPCA, remember that it is the welfare of our KIDS that we are talking about here! Humph!

NEWSCASTER 2: That's right, Bill. A nation is judged by how well it takes care of its poor little innocent white children.

The Bamboozled 1980s

As much as I blame the modern media for kowtowing to the drug-demonizing ideology of the Drug War, they were worse in the 1980s, the decade in which it was considered "hip" to turn in your very parents for using substances of which politicians disapprove.

The most cringing and unforgivable act of media kowtowing to Drug War sensibilities was performed by then-NBC correspondent Tom Brokaw. I do not remember the exact words that he used, but I certainly remember the gist. He was wrapping up a drug-related story when he said something to this effect about the Drug War: "We are waging a war, after all, and we all have to do our part."

Brokaw was ahead of his time when it comes to bowing and scraping before the racist demagogues of drug prohibition. It still turns my stomach just to think of that episode. I would like to say that it turned my stomach at the time, however, I was still at least partially bamboozled in the 1980s. I always realized at some level that the Drug War was nonsense, but I still had not seen through all the misdirection and lies that the Drug Warriors were using to get me onboard -- like the most mendacious public service announcement in human history, the one in which the Partnership for a Drug Free America 9 told us that our brains would be fried by the use of the kinds of substances that had inspired entire religions.

The execs who created that lying ad should be put on trial with the DEA for working to deprive the world of godsend medicines.













Notes for essay entitled Time for News Outlets to stop promoting drug war lies: an open letter to WTOP News:

1: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
2: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
3: Firearm Violence in the United States Center for Gun Violence Solutions, Johns Hopkins University (up)
4: How the Drug War killed Leah Betts DWP (up)
5: Forbes Magazine's Laughable Article about Nitrous Oxide DWP (up)
6: Fentanyl does not steal loved ones: Drug Laws Do DWP (up)
7: Kirkpatrick, Jonathan. 2023. “Filter.” Filter. October 10, 2023. https://filtermag.org/pcp-meth-news-media/. (up)
8: Blocks, NIDA. 2016. “How the NIDA Blocks Marijuana Research over and Over.” Cannabis.net. 2016. https://cannabis.net/blog/opinion/how-the-nida-blocks-marijuana-research-over-and-over. (up)
9: Horses Kill The Partnership for a Death Free America (up)




read more essays here





Ten Tweets

against the hateful war on US




I've always wondered why we don't just let heroin users be -- or better yet, re-legalize drugs and give them choices. Why are they punished for using heroin daily while we praise 1 in 4 women for taking an even more dependence-causing drug every day of their life?

And so, by ignoring all "up" sides to drugs, the DEA points to potential addiction as a knock-down argument for their prohibition. This is the logic of children (and uneducated children at that). It is a cost-benefit analysis that ignores all benefits.

Immanuel Kant wrote that scientists are scornful about metaphysics yet they rely on it themselves without realizing it. This is a case in point, for the idea that euphoria and visions are unhelpful in life is a metaphysical viewpoint, not a scientific one.

Attention People's magazine editorial staff: Matthew Perry was a big boy who made his own decisions. He didn't die because of ketamine or because of evil rotten drug dealers, he died because of America's enforced ignorance about psychoactive drugs.

Imagine if there were drugs for which dependency was a feature, not a bug. People would stop peddling that junk, right? Wrong. Just ask your psychiatrist.

Wonder how America got to the point where we let the Executive Branch arrest judges? Look no further than the Drug War, which, since the 1970s, has demonized Constitutional protections as impediments to justice.

If we cared about the elderly in 'homes', we would be bringing in shamanic empaths and curanderos from Latin America to help cheer them up and expand their mental abilities. We would also immediately decriminalize the many drugs that could help safely when used wisely.

Drug warriors aren't just deciding for us about drugs. They're telling us that we no longer need Coleridge poems, Lovecraft stories, Robin Williams, Sherlock Holmes, or the soma-inspired Hindu religion.

We should hold the DEA criminally responsible for withholding spirit-lifting drugs from the depressed. Responsible for what, you ask? For suicides and lobotomies, for starters.

This is why America is creeping toward authoritarianism -- because of the prohibitionists' ability to get away with everything by blaming "drugs."


Click here to see All Tweets against the hateful War on Us






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